Cubano Dolls Exhibition

Cubano Dolls, commissioned by Ruby’s Music Room.

The dolls are dressed by Maria de los Angeles Izquierdo Pequeños (known by everyone only as Maria), a Cubano artist living in Abel Santamaria, Havana.

A master seamstress, a teacher, and a speech therapist, she works her craft with wonderful hands and extraordinary imagination, joining two cultures distant in space and time: the Yoruba, a religion of Cuba, and the African culture inherited from the Congo and the Mandingo.

The dolls represent a history of slavery black women were submitted to, the sorrows and sadness which have run a long way since the 19th century. With Maria’s natural grace and talent, each doll’s apparel is a work of arts and a message of peace from the hot and hospitable Cuban land.

 

Exhibition Ends June 30 2014.